7 Game Ideas That Were Patented So No-one Else Could Use Them

when you come up with a really good idea you might try and get a patent for that really good idea so that no one can copy your really good idea like the automatic bed maker the oscillating bathtub and the chicken eye protector how did we get by without them that's the thinking behind these video game patterns that granted certain video game makers exclusive rights to certain game related innovations and as you'll see from these seven examples sometimes these patents keep rival game makers from doing anything remotely approximating the precious patented idea whereas sometimes games get away with doing something pretty similar regardless and sometimes they get sued for being a crazy taxi rip-off been waiting here forever can you take me to the retirement castle please do you have any barf bags i don't feel so good all that and more coming next on outside xbox the two lord of the rings games shadow of mordor and shadow of war were brilliant that's mostly because they allowed you to engage with tolkien's rich genre-defining fantasy world without having to read a book the size of a cinderblock or watch three three-hour movies but partly because of the nemesis system there you are it's too late to hide now once i find you i'll never lose you what is the nemesis system the long version is that the nemesis system combines detailed tracking of the player's actions with a complex web of hierarchical enemy relationships in order to create what amounts to a dynamic procedurally generated narrative the short version is that the nemesis system created the most deliciously annoying enemies in all of gaming i may even get promoted again for this well i'm glad i'm helping you meet your targets the nemesis system's genius was that it gave each enemy a unique personality in history as they battled you occasionally cheated death and were promoted up the ranks of sauron's army i mean it's certainly quicker than waiting around for pay review season in a hobby where we'll merrily murderize thousands of video game enemies with barely a second thought encounters with the nemesis enemies in shadow of mordor and shadow of war were always meaningful and the nemesis system itself is absolutely the best thing about those two games look at you look in here you think you're going to save lives a real hero that the story you tell yourself you should listen to him it's a matter of not so much life and death as death and death and it would probably be the best thing about a whole bunch of other games too if it weren't for the fact that publisher warner bros has patented the whole concept until 2035 like a giant greedy smaug lying on a big pile of gold see i know about hobbits and gandalfs and stuff the extensive patent describes a broad range of enemy behaviors in such a general way that few developers would dare to produce anything close to the nemesis system the nearest we've gotten is something like the player's anyone mechanic in watchdog's legion which lets you recruit procedurally generated civilians to your side but even those characters have very limited interaction with each other so you are the famous dead sick i can't believe it thanks for the information we knew album was bad but this is just bloody shocking i mean it's good but it's not quite the same as being cussed out by a seven foot tall nightmare monster called scott ugly face this is some kind of joke i killed you already just to be sure the warner bros patent even covers off stuff the series hasn't attempted yet like an asynchronous multiplayer version where your nemesis could go off and bother your friends in their games did you get defeated recently i had you were sandy honestly at this point it would be a genuine relief having started the process of securing this particular patent in 2015 warner bros was finally granted it in february 2021 a full six years later which is longer than it takes for my blood pressure to return to normal after running with one of these guys you have to chop your legs off to stop you running away again hey i wasn't running away it was a tactical retreat alright bloody nemesis [Music] in yet another way that mass effect is the opposite of my real life my favorite thing to do in mass effect is engage in confrontational conversation with a total stranger if you want to see more of the package than me beating you with it make a serious offer but the reason mass effect conversations are so enjoyable isn't just that sometimes you can be less than painfully polite to a massive jerk i.e the ultimate power fantasy the regs state i have the authority to say who does and doesn't come aboard if you disagree send a complaint of the chain of command no we also have to thank the distinctive mass effect style conversation wheel which keeps the dialogue flowing as we pick our way through options that are intuitively labeled and placed i don't understand your species can mate with anyone as a result trying to chat up attractive acquaintances is fun easy and natural in yet another way mass effect is the opposite of my real life so dangerous don't tell me a little danger puts you off this is all a bit overwhelming i am not used to this you so we're agreed mass effect is a gift and the conversation wheel a fine way to offer dialogue options to the player so why you might wonder don't more role-playing games do interactive conversations this way why do you more typically have a straightforward list of text lines to choose from you seem to be mad at me for some reason do you still resent the fact that i called your ship a boat then you remember the premise of this video and you surmise the makers of mass effect got a patent for this specific design of dialogue interface which they did back in 2007 the year mass effect 1 came out bioware filed a patent for a quote graphical interface for interactive dialogue the patent application described the arrangement of dialogue options around a wheel where those options are placed in consistent slots around that wheel according to their tone and purpose that way the player gets familiar with where to look for a hostile response or a friendly one or a flirty one where appropriate or inappropriate as the case may be i like knowing what kind of man i have at my back the patent application itself is an intriguing glimpse into what is as far as we know a deleted scene from the original mass effect in which an alien shopkeeper tells commander shepard to hold it right there yes sneaking piece of slop now the road not taken the patent was granted in 2011 and is set to expire in 2029 so until then you'll have to keep it bioware if you want that good dialogue wheel action looking at you dragon age charmed lady vivian ah but i didn't invite you to the chateau for money are you pleasantries here we go [Music] when crazy taxi burst onto the scene in 1999 it was a brand new take on the driving game in that instead of casting you as a racing driver it cast you as a taxi driver your objectives were much the same as a real taxi driver too pick up fares ferry them to the destination and avoid being subliminally influenced by all the roadside advertising you know what i could really go for a pizza hut the difference was with the sort of driving the game actively encouraged a real taxi driver would be picking chunks of sick out of the footwell after every trip there's a reason it's called crazy taxi and not sensible taxi [Music] oh there goes my pizza hut sega clearly knew it was onto a winner here and decided to patent its brilliant concept in practice the patent wasn't for the invention of a taxi game instead it protected a collection of game features and mechanics that when combined would create a game like crazy taxi those features included the concept of racing around an open world where you could take shortcuts rather than a closed circuit the idea of a rotating arrow to direct the player to the next objective in that open world and even pedestrians that would dive out of the way as you approached which i presume is why 2001's grand theft auto 3 didn't infringe on the patent while all these features were apparent in other games both before and after crazy taxi for the patent to be violated a game would have to exist that combined all these elements a game like 2001's the simpsons road rage yes this limp simpsons tie-in was mechanically identical to crazy taxi copying the game in far more ways than just the ones listed in the patterns can you take me to the clicky marks careful ghosted on my not joke while it must have been tempting to call the lawyers immediately sega waited until the game had sold a few million copies off the back of the simpsons license and then sued for a slice of the multi-million dollar earnings it must have helped being able to cite game reviews such as this one from next generation magazine that described the game as the most shameless incident of design burglary in recent memory which given that konami crazy races came out six months earlier is really saying something [Music] mario kart called it wants its literally everything back simpsons road rage publisher fox interactive and sega settled before the case went to trial so we'll never know whether it would have held up in court but what we do know is that because of the standard us patent length of 20 years the patent has now expired that means as of 2018 theoretically anyone could build their own rip off of crazy taxi and make it as shameless as they liked watch out here we go oh yeah there it is [Applause] you might not be aware but in addition to creating the world's most inexplicably marketable plumber nintendo also invented what would go on to be a key component of the console controller a component that was arguably crucial in the success of the aforementioned bafflingly popular mustachioed tradesman [Music] you know i'm not sure i've ever even seen him repair a sink fresh off the back of the design of the nintendo entertainment system's iconic controller in 1985 nintendo filed a patent for the d-pad or as nintendo called it the multi-directional switch which is less snappy than the d-pad but does also sound a lot less like what a pickup artist would call his apartment this all should have caused a big problem after all how am i supposed to control my blue hedgehog in running shoes on my rival sega console or my endlessly rotating orange marsupial on sony's debut games machine man 90's platform characters really were weird it turns out though that nintendo left a loophole one big enough to fit several multi-million selling consoles through a thing you'll notice if you actually read the text of the patent is that there's more mentions of a cross than my big illustrated copy of the easter story it turns out nintendo's patent application was very specific about the cross shape of its directional pad which meant other console and peripheral manufacturers were able to find inventive ways around it that's why we got circular 8 direction pads like on sega's controllers separated out directional buttons like on the playstation controller and whatever the heck this thing is on the philips cdi controller if you are the one person who bought a philips cdi a feel free to comment below and b why just why you'd probably feel pretty dumb and maybe even fake it like you'd already experienced the ultimate in games movies music and more trust me babe i know about the cvi stuff nintendo's patent for the cross-shaped directional pad finally expired 20 years later in 2005 though clearly not quite soon enough to save the original xbox 360 released that year from having a faintly rubbish circular pad they fixed that with a cross-shaped pad on the xbox one but let's be honest that console had bigger problems we're bringing a new connect sensor paired with every xbox one which puts you at the center of your entertainment never want to stand still though nintendo's current console the nintendo switch has abandoned the directional pad entirely on its removable controllers in favor of the increased flexibility offered by four separate buttons [Music] still sticking with the turtle murdering pipefitter though you do you nintendo the medium is a next-gen psychological horror game that plays out across two realities our world and the spirit world polish game studio bloober team is adorably named after a game it released back in 2010 called double blub which was adorably named after the big bouncing blobs in it which were called that's right bloobs i'd say the word bloop has lost all meaning but i'm not sure it ever had one [Music] none of that bloop business in any way hinted at the future evolution of blueberry team which was to become a notable developer of terrifying horror games such as layers most recently that studio released the medium a psychological horror game about a spirit medium called marianne who could traverse both the physical world and the parallel spirit world which looks a bit like it but with more walls made of flesh over the course of the game marianne spends time in both the physical and spirit realm frequently at the same time it's much spookier in the latter dimension but she does have a cooler jacket there so what's a girl to do marianne's synchronized existence with one foot in each world is the video game innovation for which the makers of the medium were granted a patent we render two fully fledged and visibly different words simultaneously so you can explore the physical and the spirit version of the room at the same time with no loadings at all the patent application titled method of simultaneous playing in single-player video games outlines the way in which quote one controller simultaneously controls at least two characters while each of the characters controlled by the same user is displayed simultaneously in a separate viewport end quote the upshot of which is the medium's split screen dual reality where the input from your controller in effect controls two synchronized characters in two situations both displayed at the same time in two different on-screen areas okay marianne now get your ghostly ass back and power up that elevator like in this instance where one reality has a wall and the other doesn't this instance where one reality has a pit and the other doesn't and this instance where in one reality you're doing a hadouken and the other you aren't the idea of a game character moving between parallel similar worlds isn't new in and of itself take for example the same concept in silent hill the horror game from which the medium clearly takes its cues and with which it also shares a musical composer [Music] but the patent for the medium's approach to presenting a game with a dual reality is distinct from for instance the kind of warping between two parallel worlds which we've seen before in games like 2006's prey through the fire [Music] good you may now return to your body or say the 22 year old legacy of kane soul reaver the pattern for this specific simultaneous dual reality gameplay was filed in 2016 and granted in 2019 but it wasn't until two years later we got the medium which was apparently holding on until consoles were up to the task of doing this kind of split-screen couch co-op for one player thanks to the power of the hardware you will be able to play in both worlds at the same time if you're hankering for more games with this dual reality system however you might be waiting a while because blueberry team plans on being choosy with where they deploy their patented technology answering questions on reddit a producer from the studio said that quote certainly it's something that fits the theme of the medium but we have no plans to use it now in all our games so i guess don't hold your breath for split screen double bloop 2 the re-blooming damn shame i don't understand why are you showing me this can't you check dental records or something what is wrong with you i'm i'm sorry it's my job lady you're the only living relative and no we can't check dental records there's no head it'd be difficult to explain the plot of gamecube horror game eternal darkness sanity's requiem within the space of a single youtube video it was set in four different global locations in multiple different periods of history and there were more characters than a game of thrones reunion episode set in hell call me hbo i've got a spec script locked and loaded one thing that's easy to explain though is the sanity meter which was a key gameplay mechanic in this psychological horror game essentially every time you were spotted by an otherworldly enemy in eternal darkness you risked reducing a green on-screen sanity bar which represented your ever-crumbling mental state it's similar to the effect i experienced when i watched the england football team compete in a major tournament [Music] in eternal darkness the further you let your sanity bar drain as if that's how mental health works the weirder the game became with hallucinations changes to the environment and other strangeness to represent the fact that you were being driven slowly mad [Music] this can't be happening okay maybe not that slowly nintendo was clearly rather keen on this piece of game design and patented it for future use that's in spite of the fact that this was the company's very first mature rated game as a publisher and it wouldn't be a great fit for a sanity tracking system to see for example luigi gradually losing his grip on reality over the course of a mario kart race [Music] actually i take that back i would totally play that if you're another game developer though you're out of luck and only a small handful of games have managed to incorporate sanity mechanics in the 20 years since the patent application was filed games such as call of cthulhu dark corners of the earth amnesia dark descent shadow hearts 2 covenant don't starve american mcgees alice dead by daylight fahrenheit indigo prophecy five nights at freddy's friday the 30th of the game suffering you know what i'm starting to think it's weird that mario kart doesn't have a sanity meter with the increasing power of games machines loading times have been getting shorter and they'll continue to get shorter dwindling down to nothing until one day you'll have to explain to your grandchildren that sometimes grandad had to stop playing a game so the game could get more game ready for him to play that is if you can get them to pause the seamless open world games streaming perpetually into their brain station fives that day has not yet come however and so occasionally we still have to amuse ourselves through a loading screen unless that is the loading screen contains a secondary smaller game to distract from the agony of waiting for your entertainment in fact putting a mini game inside a loading screen is such a neat fun idea that you might wonder why more games don't do it well among the reasons for that is how publisher namco applied for a patent back in 1995 patenting the concept of quote auxiliary games unquote that would pop up while the main game loaded up in the background [Applause] [Music] the upshot of namco's successful patent application was that only namco games could have proper mini games in their loading screens like how you could play galaxian in ridge racer or starblade in tekken 5. although thankfully namco's patent was not so general and wide-ranging to prevent some other games from dabbling with mini-game adjacent activities in their loading screens like the infinite void of combo practice in bayonetta or the infinite void of running in circles in assassin's creed as far as i'm concerned it's a mini game and i'm the best at it the namco loading screen minigame patent did quietly expire back in 2015 so everyone should now feel free to stick whatever mini games they can into these space between levels in their game before the loading screen itself goes extinct i mean cowboy themed peggle while i wait for red dead redemption 2 to load let's make it happen look at you look at me here we are we made it to the end of the video those were seven games ideas games ideas yeah that makes sense they were patented so no one else could use them sometimes they did a little bit and it was fine and sometimes they did and it wasn't fine so that's what happened just then if you would like to watch another video from outside xbox it was a bit like that but about something completely different then why not check out the playlist linked on screen there she is somewhere and uh also if you'd like to know every time we publish a video just like this one every single week on a thursday then why not subscribe and if you're already subscribed why not take it to the next level your relationship with outside xbox and hit the bell button and ask for a notification because then you will know to the second when there is a hot new video from outside xbox and that's everything for right now thanks for watching see you again next time

Channel: outsidexbox

Views: 1,003,310

Keywords: outsidexbox, andy farrant, jane douglas, mike channell, 7 things, top ten, top 10, top 5, top five, list, countdown, listicle, patents, patent, the medium, crazy taxi, namco, loading screens, nemesis system, shadow of mordor, shadow of war, mass effect, conversation wheel, directional pad, nintendo, sanity system, eternal darkness, sanity's requiem

Id: sFG4PCDoIXE

Length: 22min 48sec (1368 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 22 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/w0lfw1nd22]

The nemesis system being patented is a real shame, I'd love to see it in a superhero game or something like that.